Chapter Thirteen
~ Jude ~
Kenneth’s penthouse, as it turned out, was even more terrifying in open-plan mode. The marble kitchen island had been transformed into a command center, every horizontal surface colonized by laptops, tablets, and the kind of cord management I thought only existed in CIA renderings.
Miles Cranston’s legal pad was squared at a mathematically perfect ninety to a decanter of scotch nobody had poured from.
Fred, Jake D’Amato’s head of security, had staked out a position near the refrigerator with both hands loose and flat at his sides, eyes sweeping the room for exits, entries, and, possibly, threats to the sanctity of the snack drawer.
Adams had vanished somewhere, probably to reinforce the security perimeter or, knowing Adams, to run background checks on the entire guest list for the evening.
I clocked this in three seconds flat, along with the following:
- Kyue and Lucas, both in dark suits, occupying the nearest end of the island like royalty at the world’s most fraught family dinner. Kyue’s posture was precise, hands stacked one atop the other on a tablet, but his leg bounced with nervous energy visible only if you were looking for it.
- Alejandro Díaz, of the Brooklyn Díaz, in a navy three-piece that made the rest of us look like interns, standing at the window with a glass of water and a facial expression that said: I’ve survived more dangerous meetings than this, and in at least two of them someone lost a finger.
- Delancy Díaz, hair cropped sharp and face unreadable, seated at the island before a three-monitor rig set up in a shallow arc, each screen running a different operation in parallel. He typed without looking down, fingers so fast I wondered if he’d had them mechanically upgraded.
Kenneth, of course, owned the room. He was at the head of the island, sleeves rolled, tie off, every inch the CEO even in the absence of a board. He scanned the room and said, “Let’s get started.”
He turned to me as I entered and, with a hand at my back, steered me into the only open seat. The motion was casual enough for plausible deniability, but not so subtle that anyone missed the signal.
I was not to be side-lined tonight.
“Most of you know Jude Thomas,” Kenneth said. “If not, you’re about to.”
I could see Miles’s pen twitch on the legal pad, a tiny tell of anticipation. Fred gave me the same look he gave investors that tried to get close to his boss: neutral until proven otherwise.
Kenneth went around the room, dispensing names, credentials, and, in one case, an abbreviated criminal history. “Lucas Kincaid, strategy. Kyue Panich Kincaid, numbers and risk. Miles Cranston, legal. Fred, logistics.”
Fred’s nod in my direction was the physical equivalent of, “I’ve been briefed, and you don’t scare me.”
He continued: “Alejandro Díaz, our external, and Delancy, cyber and intel.” Alejandro raised his glass a quarter-inch, eyes scanning me from hair to shoes and back.
Delancy didn’t look up from the monitors but, without breaking rhythm, said, “Hey, Jude,” in a way that was both literal and a challenge.
The room held the expectation of a bomb threat, and for a second, I wanted to ask if someone should sweep for actual bombs. Instead, I folded my hands and said, “Thank you for making time.”
Kyue, seated directly left of me, made contact first, a brief squeeze at my shoulder, a pressure that lasted no more than a second but communicated years of friendship, loyalty, and something else I could not name.
Lucas’s acknowledgment was a single up-nod, barely a movement, but in the world of boardroom politics, it was an all-in endorsement.
Fred’s gaze hit me, appraised, then moved on—something I decided to interpret as a compliment.
Delancy, finally looking up, met my eyes for a four-count. It was not warm, but it was not hostile, either. He held the look, then said, “You’re shorter than I expected,” and went back to typing.
Alejandro watched this with the faintest hint of amusement. “He is effective,” Alejandro said, and the compliment, such as it was, landed with the weight of a notarized affidavit.
Kenneth’s hand, still at my back, stayed for another two seconds before letting go.
I did a mental roll-call: one hacker, one mob boss, a tech billionaire’s head of security, an attorney, two of my best friends, and the man I accidentally married. I color-coded my grocery lists for comfort, and yet here I was in the center of a war room, and not the least competent person in it.
Kenneth caught my eye from across the table, and the look was grounding.
For a fraction of a second, all the noise went out of the room, and it was just the two of us, exactly as it had been in Las Vegas, with the world spinning outside the window and none of it mattering if we were both alive to see it.
He finally said, “Delancy, you’re up.”
The room pivoted. Every head turned.
Delancy cleared his throat. His voice was the opposite of suspenseful. He spoke the way a search engine might if it was given a soul, but told to keep it strictly professional.
“Unknown number was a burner,” he said. The main monitor behind him loaded an image of a basic Samsung with the last four digits highlighted in acid yellow.
“Purchased at a bodega on West 55th. Activation date was six weeks ago, two weeks before the Vegas event. That’s before the wedding, before any official announcements. ”
He let the numbers hang. Nobody interrupted.
“Location data is dirty. Calls and texts were made exclusively from Midtown, no triangulation possible. All payment was cash. But—” here he clicked, and the next image loaded, a scanned receipt with a timestamp, “—the phone was bought two blocks from the office of Diane Mercer.”
A low ripple went around the table, the kind of collective exhale that suggested everyone else had gotten here just ahead of the evidence but were waiting for confirmation.
“I’m not saying it’s a direct line,” Delancy added. “But if I was building a map, this would be the first red pin.”
Alejandro sipped his water, gaze locked on the monitor. He didn’t blink, but his left eyebrow went up a quarter-inch.
Delancy moved on. “Mercer’s firm runs all event infrastructure for the Braddock social calendar—official, unofficial, and legacy events.
Most of it is white-glove, some is off-books.
She’s been skimming for years, but only recently started coding ghost events.
” He gestured, and the screen populated with three flagged invoices: the event name, the hosting entity, and three “guest lists” stripped from the metadata.
“The pattern,” said Delancy, “is three events in the last four months. Two are shell companies. One is flagged as ‘private strategy session’ for a non-existent foundation. The guest lists overlap with your board, Kenneth. Voss is at all three. Two more names—“ click, names highlighted, “—from the extended circle. The third event, last week, guest list is redacted, but there’s a single payment to a courier service. That’s where your sister comes in.”
He pulled up a final screen. It was Carolyn, captured in high-res from a security cam outside Mercer’s building, carrying an envelope, her expression carefully neutral, but her knuckles white on the paper.
“She’s not the architect,” Delancy said. “She’s the go-between.” He left the rest unsaid, but every person in the room could see where it was headed.
For three seconds, nobody spoke. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator and, faintly, the whir of the HVAC keeping the windows from fogging over.
Miles tapped his pen, once, but did not write. I could see the gears turning in his head: case law, federal statutes, the precise language needed to make any of this actionable if they needed it.
Kenneth’s composure had not changed, but I saw the micro-movement of his right hand, a flex that meant he was running the names through his own internal counter-intelligence.
Lucas asked, “Anything on the mastermind?”
Delancy shook his head. “Not yet. The event codes are unique, not recycled. The routing on the payments is triple-blind. Whoever set this up is either very new at it, or very good. I’ll know within forty-eight hours.”
I put my hand on the back of Kenneth’s wrist, just briefly. The pulse under my fingers was steady, but I felt the tension. He didn’t look at me, but he did, infinitesimally, relax his jaw.
Miles said, “If we can tie the shell events to any communication between Mercer and Voss, that’s a straight-line to conspiracy.
Board-level, at minimum. If there’s interstate, it goes to federal wire fraud.
” He said it the way you’d say, “We need more milk,” but with an edge that told me he’d be up all night looking for the link.
Kyue, who had been silent until now, asked, “And what about us?”
Delancy smiled, not kindly. “If you’re not getting tracked, you will be. And it won’t be social media. It’ll be direct. I’d say you’re already on three lists.”
Lucas nodded, as if expecting it. He looked to Kenneth. “You’ll want Jake’s trackers. Both of you.” He meant me and Kenneth, but said it like a done deal.
I said, “Isn’t that a little much for—”
Kyue, gently, turned his left hand over on the counter. Just below the base knuckle of his pinky was a pale, half-centimeter scar, raised and visible under the lights. He said, “It saved my life.”
That was the end of my objection.
Kenneth, who had already pulled his phone, was texting. He didn’t need to say who he was contacting. He looked at me, then the rest of the table. “Jake will have them ready tomorrow, first thing. We’ll go together.”
Fred, silent to this point, cleared his throat. “Anything you want watched, specifically?”
Kenneth said, “The building, the staff, and every delivery, but focus on the internal. The threat isn’t coming from outside.”
Fred nodded once. I believed he would know if a single cracker went missing from the kitchen.